Directed By Ian Tuason

Starring – Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Michele Ducquet

The Plot – The host (Kiri) of an ‘all-things-creepy’ podcast moves into her dying mother’s house to be her primary caregiver. When her podcast is sent 10 audio recordings of a young pregnant couple experiencing paranormal noises, she realizes the woman’s story is a mirror of her own and each new recording scratches at her sanity, drawing her into a fate she cannot escape.

Rated R for adult language

undertone | Official Trailer 2 HD | A24

POSITIVES

In the same ways that Skinamarink experimented with the textures and undefined shapes of its puzzlingly abstract presentation to pioneer a refreshingly unique lo-fi aesthetic to analog horror driving the imagination of its audience, so too does Undertone, with its muffling and contorted sound designs being effectively utilized to tell a bigger paranormal story transpiring off-screen, and while it doesn’t always lead to the maximized level of frights attained from a movie with incredibly creative marketing at its disposal, it was nevertheless an eerily compelling and meticulously crafted engagement that fully deserves the attention from its audience, especially with first time director, Ian Tuason, fleshing out these thickly dreadful atmospheres that depend heavily on technical components to brilliantly flesh them out. As expected, the intricacies of the marvelous sound design takes center stage here, particularly in the breathtaking ways they continuously tease and tantalize audiences who are hanging on their every noise to seek clarity in the confines of recordings that lack such overarching context, where something deeper constantly permeates beneath the surface at all times. What’s impressive isn’t just how the production continuously fleshes out suggestion that subliminally taps into the preconceived fears of our imaginations to manifest something unattainable visually, but rather how the mix, designed in Dolby, perfectly emulates the immersive essence of being framed distinctly from the noise-canceling headphones of Evie’s perspective, allowing us to coherently interpret matters in the same vein that she does, and though the film is one of those gimmicked experiences based distinctly for the biggest auditoriums with the greatest surround sound speakers that money can buy, there’s an equally intriguing desire to want to watch this on my laptop with my own state-of-the-art headphones, in order to sift through anything atmospherically that I might’ve missed within the absorbing acoustics of a near-empty auditorium, appraising impeccable replay value to a film that never shies away from the aforementioned dreadful circumstance that Tuason spends ample time perfecting, proving the ages old sentiment that there’s nothing creepier than children singing nursery rhymes with the loosest of lyrical interpretation. Beyond this, I don’t think that the overall presentation for the movie is getting the kind of much-needed attention that it deserves with the ways it works cohesively with the sound, inspiring an intimately claustrophobic experience that focuses distinctly on Evie’s isolation factors away from the outside world. Everything from the single-stage setting, to only Evie and her ailing mother being shown, to the unorthodox 2.12:1 boxed in aspect ratio, to the framing and subtle contortions of the lens, truly enriches this surrounding helplessness that effortlessly breeds empathy into the integral design of the character, allowing us to see the urgency of her developing plight, despite the fact that her artificially enacted stoicism in front of the microphone presents this brick wall unphased by the delves into the disparity that defines her show. With regards to the camera work and framing, Tuason and cinematographer Graham Beasley feed into the stirring restlessness of the many things that go bump in the night of our unrelenting conscience, featuring many over the shoulder frames and subtle shadow-play that constantly weigh heavily on the questionable realities of what you’re legitimately seeing, in between these mesmerizing single take panning shots of rooms that linger unrelentingly with the uncertainty of Evie slipping casually out of frame, as well as some slight contortions of the camera to build tension through slowly methodical movements that further obscure ours and Evie’s grasp over reality, and though this is Tuason’s imprint on an industry that has alluded him to this point, it’s clear that he’s a visionary director who makes the most of his budgetary limitations, a feat that will help him tremendously in helming the upcoming Paranormal Activity installment. Aside from this, while the storytelling and screenplay are quite flawed, what I appreciated about them was this ambiguous sense of transparency within its information and exposition that demanded more interpretation from the audience to coherently piece matters together, eliciting a challengingly complex and unconventional narrative that will inevitably divide responses on the deviation of expectations that they expect from a singular definition of horror. As being one of those rare viewers who heralded Skinamarink for its suggestive complexity, I love that not everything here was tied up in ways that felt convenient or tidy for Evie or the audience to piece together, instead opting for a variety of unanswered questions and unresolved arcs that inspire the conversation among fan theories, despite a much more thorough contextual outline than its analog predecessor. Lastly, I have to give ample credit to Nina Kiri’s dazzling performance, as she’s not only tasked with the incredible responsibility of carrying the entirety of the movie’s emotional depth solely on her shoulders, but also pulls off this compelling duality in character between reality and podcast that continuously feels at a tug-of-war with itself, complete with this unraveling edginess that says as much in a single look as it takes most actresses to express with a thousand words. Without question, Kiri’s greatest strength is her ability to evolve a scene gracefully and authentically in ways that convey this suffocating tension eating away at her sanity, without anything even close to exaggerated dramatics, especially during those moments when the doubt of her speculative character gives way to desperation, and considering this is Kiri’s biggest role to date, she rises to the occasion with limitless vulnerability to both of her bleak situations, grading the film on a curve of legitimacy that takes the supernatural and grounds it with ample humanity.

NEGATIVES

While Undertone does provide a breathtaking technical mastery that firmly kept me invested to the technical spectrum on full tilt here, it is unfortunately the latest victim of horror for hyperbole that will unfairly craft a series of impossible expectations for audiences coming into the film, particularly in its lack of scares that are most disappointing for a movie involving trailers that honestly chilled me more than its 90 minutes of storytelling. Tuason certainly revels in the anxiousness of the undefined, particularly in the depths of his spine-tingling sound design, but it rarely ever amounts to anything meaningful in the full blown pay-off of this exploration, especially alongside a third act that simultaneously serves as the highlight of the movie, yet still feels underwhelming for its overly flashy showmanship for imagery and abrupt ending that hinders on the metaphorical meaning more than mainstream audiences would ever want in a satisfying pay-off, making this feel like a great idea whose majority of frights were contained to a third act, which throws off the balance of the rest of the film before it. This obviously leads to tedious problems with the pacing that makes the first hour of the movie a bit of a test to endure, especially one that feels tightly constricted creatively, even in the depths of a meager 90 minute runtime. Most of the problem certainly stems from this slow-burn structure that Tuason constructs, featuring very little contextual answers outside of the plot to give us a firmer grasp of these characters. However, there’s just as much backlash from the extent of the movie’s erroneous outline that feels like it stretches the material to accommodate the minimizing of its runtime, particularly in the script’s strangely surreal efforts to stretch these ten recordings throughout three sessions of this podcast, without anything even closely logical to prolong such curiosity in the confines and repetition of a single-stage setting, and it makes the film feel like it would’ve been a tautly enacted perfect 50-minute short film without any of the echoed lingering that intrudes upon the urgency of Evie’s bleak situation, leaving me more curiously invested in the arc between her and her dying mother, instead of the lazily stretched paranormal aspect of these recordings, the majority of which weren’t remotely chilling or even momentarily uncomfortable for me. Finally, even the dialogue starts to intrude upon the air of ambiguity that the movie has going in its favor, particularly in the spoon-fed exposition of nursery rhymes or possessive entities that halt the movie’s momentum in place, in order to read a Wikipedia page entry of their origins, and while I understand that they’re a necessity to meet the movie at eye level with its developments, there was an air of appreciation in the ambiguity and aforementioned lack of answers that connected a link to Skinamarink, sacrificed for the benefit of attentively challenged audiences who require gift-wrapped answers in lacking the drive or energy to seek them out for themselves.

OVERALL
Undertone strikes a scintillating sensorial experience benefited by masterfully sharp sound design and tenacious technique behind the lens, but one that is ultimately a victim of its own societal hyperbole that unfairly paints itself as the next big thing in horror, without any of the fully-conceived frights to flourish such frenzy. Despite the structural flaws of its inconsistent script, Ian Tuason fearlessly taps into the claustrophobic confines of our minds that breeds speculation in the unattainable imagination, and with a career-defining performance from Nina Kiri atop his accomplishments, uses the film to springboard himself into the stratosphere of future projects that we will inevitably seek out, as a result of his name being firmly attached.

My Grade: 7.3 or B-